Mp3tag Windows

Introduction

Mp3tag is a freeware (closed source) program dedicated to editing the tags of all music files. Despite its name it also works with any music container which supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags. It allows you to do so in a quick and automated fashion! Some of its most useful features are fetching album artwork, getting metadata from discogs and other databases, regex formatting, and converting between filenames and metadata.

However, before you use Mp3tag you need to install it!

Installing is the standard click-through process, just clicking Next should end with a satisfactory installation.

Editing Tags

Mp3tag works with a sort of sandbox. First you open the tracks you want to edit in your interface, and then you can edit them, and remove them and go to the next batch (or keep them there if you want to). So find the files you want to edit, and add them with either File->Add Directory or File->Add Directory



Here I've selected some badly tagged music. You can manually edit the tags by either editing the values in the table on the right side, OR you can use the panel on the left, followed by clickingSave. If you don't click save, you will have in fact not changed anything.

Converting Tags  Filenames

Now I'm going to Auto-number my tracks by using the Auto-Numbering Wizard in the tools menu. (You probably won't ever need to do this). However I now want to fix all my filenames to match a specific format from the metadata. This is something you probably have to do all the time if you like organized music, or are uploading to What.CD. To do so, select the tracks whose filenames you want to change and go to Convert->Tags to Filenames or use right-click as below



Now use the format string that you wanted to name your songs with, for example

%track% - %artist% - %title%

Now you will have changed all the filenames to match this format based on the current tag data!

Filenames  Tags

This direction can be a bit trickier, because you need to make your formatting string match the filenames. This means if you've selected a bunch of filenames that don't follow the same format, you're in trouble, even if the format only differs by an extra space. Lets say I have some files named

AristName - AlbumName - Track.mp3

Then I can scrape that information into the tags, by using the format string below... 

%artist% - %album% - %track%

Mp3tag will tell you if you're doing it right by giving you a preview of the metadata that will be scraped in the box below (check for extra spaces!)

Getting Album Art

Coming soon!

Fetching metadata from databases

Coming soon!

Congratulations!

Removing annoying APE Tags Only from mp3 files

APE Tags can be annoying, specially if in your mp3 player, the APE tag takes precedence over ID3 tags (ex. foobar2000). This leads to unexpected and irritating displays. Be aware that APE tags contain MP3Gain information - so removing the APE tag will remove this info.
Removing an APE tag completely is easy using mp3tag.

Click on Tools->Options->Tag->Mpeg
In the top section - Read - untick APE - tick ID3v1 & ID3v2
In the middle section - Write - untick APE
In the bottom section - Remove - tick only APE

Open the folder which contains the mp3 files that you want to remove the APE tag from. (Use CTRL-D)

Right click on the thin panel line that contains the columns being shown (The first column is usually "Filename")
Select Customize - scroll down the list and find and select Tag. Use the Move button to move it to the top of the list.

Next - make sure that your mp3 file has a proper ID3 tag - otherwise removing the APE tag will leave the mp3 with NO Tag information at all.

On the leftmost (Tag) Column - you should see an entry something like: ID3v2.3 (ID3v2.3 APEv2)

This means the file had 2 tags, both an ID3 and an APE tag.
You want to remove only the APE tag.

Because in the Options - you chose "Remove - APE" - only this tag will be removed if you choose to remove tags from the mp3.

Next: Highlight the files you want to remove the APE tags from.
Right Click on the selection and choose Remove Tag - (IMPORTANT - Don't choose "Remove" but "Remove Tag")

As simple as that, your APE tag has been removed from the mp3 - leaving behind the ID3 tag.

Other

Copy & paste

A valuable, time saving feature of Mp3tag is the ability to copy and then paste multiple tags from multiple files. Use this feature to save significant time uploading multiple formats, or in transcoding from one format to another, as Mp3tag will apply ID3 or Vorbis Comments, etc. as applicable.

Procedure: 

1) You are ready once you have finished tagging the original album to your satisfaction. If the originals are not already loaded, drag the folder you wish to copy into the Mp3tag window and it will load only those files, or hit CTRL-D to select the folder manually.
2) Click within the file list and hit CTRL-A to select all files. Right-click and select Tag Copy.
3) Load the new files, as in step 1, to have their tags replaced. Ensure that Mp3tag now displays the tracks in their corresponding order to the original album.
4) If the new album has poor tags, you may wish to hit CTRL-A to select all files, then right-click and select Remove Tag. (Unconfirmed: If a custom tag exists in the second batch which is not assigned in the first batch, it will not be over-written, and will continue to exist. This can be good or bad depending on whether you wish to keep it.) 
5) Click within the file list and hit CTRL-A to select all files. Right-click and select Tag Paste.

Once the pasting process is complete, the second batch of files should verify as having all of the first batch's tags, in the proper format for that file.

Advanced

Actions

MP3Tags features "Actions" which can be, for advanced users, a dynamic and powerful tool for automated tagging

More coming

Multiple Tag Delimiter

MP3Tag uses two backslashes to split tags. For example, if you enter artist1\\artist2 it will create two ARTIST tags, one for each artist. However, if you use a script to enter \\ into your tags, beware that MP3Tag will only do the actual splitting if:

1) the field is displayed at the tag panel on the left and you save the tags
2) if you open the extended tag panel and save the tags by pressing "OK"
3) if you click into the field at the main window
(for the first two cases, the fields are only split if all the selected files have the same values)

This means that unless you perform one of the three preceding actions, your automatically generated \\ will be string literals.

A solution to this problem is using the "Split field by separator" action